Our approach to web accessibility: The Beagle Street way!
We’re dedicated to making Life Insurance accessible to anyone. Learn more about the steps we take to ensure you can see, hear, and understand our cover.
The Beagle Street philosophy is all about making Life Insurance a viable option for everyone, and a big part of that rests on making people feel comfortable about what they’re signing up for.
Presenting our information in a way that makes it easy to understand, no matter who you are or what your circumstances might be, is a big part of making our cover accessible to all.
How do we go about that? We’re glad you asked!
Speaking in plain English
Don’t you just hate it when companies obfuscate their key verticals with blue-sky nomenclature? Us too!
Top of our list when it comes to making our Life Insurance easy to understand is speaking in plain English. Yes, we’re selling a comprehensive financial product which needs to cover a lot of legal technicalities, but our method is to word it all in a way that’s both accurate and clear.
Plain English doesn’t mean ‘dumbed-down.’ We just trim the jargon, and where we are required to use more complex phrases (usually for legal reasons), we also explain what they mean in layman’s terms.
Browser compatibility
We conduct tests to make sure that our site works with the latest versions of the most commonly used web browsers, like Chrome, Firefox and Safari, as well as the most popular tablets, smartphones and the like.
Of course, there are a whole lot of browsers and devices out there, so we can’t guarantee with 100% certainty that our site will run on every possible combination. If you do spot any compatibility issues, please contact us and let us know about it.
Sticking to the standard
Ever wondered who decides how your internet experience is supposed to go? Well, they’re called the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and they’re responsible for establishing the rules and guidelines for how different websites display in your browser.
Our site has been built to comply with W3C standards for HTML and CSS. This has three big advantages for you:
- Our site looks great on a range of different browsers and devices.
- Search engines can access pages better, so you can find us more easily.
These standards help pages load quicker, so you get a smoother experience.
Adapting browser colours
Because we’ve built our site to the proper standard, it’s compatible with a bunch of handy shortcuts you can use to enhance your viewing experience.
One of these is changing the colours of the site, if a certain colour combo is hard on your eyes. Your browser should have details on how to do this, but for the most common ones:
- Internet Explorer (or Microsoft Edge): Go to Tools > Internet Options > General > Colours
- Mozilla Firefox: Go to Tools > Options > Content > Colours
- Opera: Go to Tools > Preferences > Fonts and Page Style
- Safari: Go to Preferences > Appearance
- Chrome: While Chrome currently provides no function like this in the browser itself, you can install one of several plug-ins to achieve the same effect.
Resizing your text
If it’s the size of the text that’s giving you grief, there’ll be a way to resize it, depending on what browser you’re using:
- Internet Explorer: Go to View > Text size
- Mozilla Firefox: Go to View > Text size
- Opera: Go to View > Zoom
- Safari: Go to View > Make text bigger
- Chrome: Go to Options > Zoom
You can also do this on most modern browsers by holding the Ctrl key (or the Apple key on a Mac) and pressing the plus key, or scrolling with your mouse wheel until the text is at your preferred size.
You might also want to adjust the display resolution on your device itself to give you a crisper image, clearer display or to make everything bigger:
- On a Windows PC this should be under Control Panel > Settings.
- On a Mac, it should be under System Preferences > Displays > Resolution.
Remember that the operating systems your devices use are likely to be updated pretty regularly, so if you can’t find the right option in those places, a quick search should point you in the right direction.
Handy keyword shortcuts
While we’re on it, here are some shortcuts you can use to perform various functions in your web browser without chasing through different menus:
- Open a new browser window: Ctrl + N
- Open a new tab in the current browser: Ctrl + T
- Go home: Alt + Home
- Go back a page: Backspace (when you’re not currently typing something)
- Go forward a page: Shift + Backspace
- Move the cursor to the address bar: F6
- Close the current window: Ctrl + W (or Alt + F4 to close any program)
Other web resources
There are a number of services out there dedicated to making UK websites accessible to all. Here are a few of the handiest:
AbilityNet provide accessibility services and consultancy around the country. Their My Computer My Way service has a lot of detail on how to optimise your devices for better use.
The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) website hosts a technology hub, full of advice for getting online if you’re visually impaired.
Web Accessibility in Mind provide resources and products to solve people’s accessibility issues, and are a leading global provider of expertise in this field.
Accessibility problems? Get in touch!
Hopefully this guide has helped you, or someone you know, through some of the more common problems accessing info on sites like this.
If not, we want to help with that too! Give us a call on 0800 247 247, or email [email protected]
